


Open Eyes

by Oldflowers



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Porn, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Divorce, Rare Pairings, Rare Relationships, Requited Unrequited Love, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:55:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26572558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oldflowers/pseuds/Oldflowers
Summary: Jim had thought of Harvey as many things in the time he'd known him: a two-faced attorney, a slick-suited politician, and as of late, a body to fill the spot Babs had left in his bed.
Relationships: Harvey Dent/Jim Gordon, Past Harvey Dent/Rachel Dawes, Past Jim Gordon/Barbara Eileen Gordon
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Open Eyes

_‘Open your eyes and look at me, Jim. God, I want you to watch what you do to me. Look at me while I’m fucking you—’_

The house sat heavy with shadow, illuminated only by the periodic flicker of a streetlamp on the fritz. It’d been a month since Babs took the kids. It showed. The atmosphere was skewed, glum, and abnormal given the fact that for too many years to count, it had been so greatly different.

On the coffee table, once smudged with the kids’ sticky fingerprints, Jim’s cell phone jumped incessantly. A single name ran across the screen: Harvey Dent. 

Jim had thought of Harvey as many things in the time he'd known him: a two-faced attorney who investigated his officers, a slick-suited politician who deserved his every vote, and, as of late, a body to fill the spot Babs had left in his bed. Many things — _too_ many things. 

Skittering over sugary coffee rings, Jim’s cell phone only reminded him of the things he’d done to make their relationship blurrier. He’d come home heavy and bleak, dialed the number, and invited Harvey to keep him company. He’d only come to his senses after the call ended — stood in place, indescribably paralyzed, and asked himself what Babs would think of the man he’d become. Then he tried to bury it all. Sent Harvey a message calling it off and pressed his palms to his eyes until the velveteen darkness riddled him blind.

The phone, goddamn it, still rang.

_‘Open your eyes and—’_

Jim ignored it. He waited through it, the incessant buzzing rattling in his skull jackhammer-loud, and when it finally fell silent, it was as if all other noise was taken with it. The wind, the distant traffic, Gotham’s echoing pulse — gone. The streetlight in the window blinked on and off, but it didn’t buzz like usual. It was quiet enough for Jim to close his eyes. Quiet enough that it became the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. He focused on his breathing, his headache, the soreness throbbing in his bones.

 _One — in. Two — out._ _Three—_

Sirens erupted on some far-off street. Gunshots, shouting — Gotham’s typical disorder. It was going down somewhere near Malone and 6th avenue — at the Quick-Stop, maybe. The place was crawling with crime. 

It didn’t startle him anymore now that there were no hands clutching him, no whirlwind of children sprinting from their rooms, afraid. There weren’t any flushed faces to hold in his hands; no blue eyes to look right into and make a dozen promises. Junior first, because he was the most fearful of the kids. Junior’s sister second, because she’d look at Jim wide-eyed and conflicted and tell him to get his gun. 

It was the general suffocating loneliness that made it Jim Gordon’s home and his alone. There was the occasional buzz of a microwave heating take-out; a trickle of tap water or the sound of pipes rattling in the walls like rusted cans. Otherwise, the place was hollow. The only sound to be heard came right from the street — police sirens, raccoons, stray cats, doors. Gotham, Gotham, Gotham.

If Jim didn’t think about it, he could force himself to imagine Babs right there in the middle of it, wandering the kitchen the way she always liked to do. In his imagination, she’d linger idly at various cabinets; sit at the counter and hum and play her crossword puzzles. He could even imagine the sound of her voice — the sound of it when she wasn’t yelling. The sound of it when she said things that sounded more like love and less like disdain. But sometimes, he took what he could get.

This time, she stood in front of him, angry like she often was when Jim would look at her. It was why he preferred to look from afar. When she brushed their daughter’s hair or kissed Junior’s forehead, she looked younger. Sweeter. Happy.

_‘Jim, I swear to god, one day, you’re gonna get yourself killed. Do you hear me? The Batman? He’s a criminal. I’ll never understand why you insist on putting your job before your own—’_

_Jesus, she was beautiful._ She looked real, white-knuckling her robe shut, her hair in a silver-streaked bun. There was an angry scarlet flush on her face, jaw, chest, so tangible that Jim could almost take her hand and plead for her to trust him. He imagined doing just that: reaching out, grasping her fingers, feeling her silky-soft skin, supple with age. A lick of sensual flame crackled in his ribcage. She drew her hand back and slapped him hard enough that, if it’d been real, one of the kids would have come running.

It was a phantom sting. A tingle bloomed across his cheek.

_‘Don’t touch me.’_

“I’m sorry, Babs. I—”

The streetlight buzzed one last time, jarringly loud, and plunged the room into darkness when it finally died. The image of Babs fractured and disappeared in front of Jim. That same wail of sirens endured, untroubled by the ink-black night. 

He recalled his daughter’s voice. She spoke the same familiar script over the backdrop of sirens. _‘Dad? Dad, where’s your gun? Do you have it?’_

Unholstering his pistol, he heard the rustle of his coat, the click of an undone button. It was seamless, liquid muscle memory. The grip of his pistol was cold steel against his palm. He wrapped his fingers around it, flipping the safety off. He was holding something comfortable. Comfortable like Babs' hand, a feeling decades-old. Smooth. Familiar. The cold ring of steel touched his temple, and he found that his shooting hand only shook when he was on the other side of it. It was nothing like Babs' touch, her fingers in his hair, her thumb brushing over the streaks of grey where the barrel trembled against his skull.

 _‘I love you, dad,’_ Junior had said when Jim swept the hair from his forehead. One tired blue eye had been cracked open, misty with sleep, and his chin was still buried in his train-themed covers. It was just before dawn, too early for any kid his age, but the boy would have been sad for the rest of the day had Jim not come to say goodbye before work. He had smiled up at him, glittery-bright. _‘I hope you catch all the bad guys.'_

Squeezing his eyes, Jim flipped the safety back on, the click echoing room-to-room in the dark. With a hapless swing, he threw the gun in a far-off direction. He didn’t care where it landed. He didn’t care if he never found it again.

What broke the dismal silence was the click of the front door being unlocked. It was Harvey — had to be. No one else ever visited, and Harvey never knocked.

Babs had always kept a key under the mat no matter how often Jim insisted it was unsafe. Jim reluctantly capitulated to it, and after Babs was gone, he found he hadn’t the heart to move it. Not long after, Harvey Dent had become an odd fixture in his new world, drifting in and out of Jim’s daily slog often enough that it didn’t make a difference whether Harvey had the key or not. Jim would always let him inside.

Jim’s service weapon slid on the ground, pushed by the opening door until it was pinned against the baseboard. Harvey looked down at it, locked the door behind him, and picked up the gun, tucking his fingers away from the trigger. He stood for a moment and turned the fine black metal over and over in his hand as if studying hard evidence.

It might have been intimidating to witness if Jim hadn’t personally interrogated every criminal Gotham had behind bars. Perhaps evident only to Jim, Harvey was as much of Gotham’s white knight as he was its potential destruction. A mind like Harvey’s, as sharp and raw as it was, was as capable of accomplishing good as it was of committing the unthinkable. Through the half-open blinds, the distant moon painted a sliver of light on Harvey’s left eye. The man was an image of duality: light and dark set bare in real-time, raw in a way that reassured him that Gotham was lucky Harvey Dent was a good man.

Jim didn’t make any effort to stand and greet him. One glance at the man, and his energy was expended.

In two wide strides, Harvey crossed the room, dropping the gun onto the coffee table where it landed with a loud thud. The cold, black weapon stood out even in the dark. Surrounded by newspapers and coffee cups, it was a grim sight among the table’s otherwise innocent clutter.

“What did you do?” Harvey questioned without preamble.

Jim pointedly glanced between the gun and Harvey’s hard blue eyes, running low on patience. “What do you think?” 

“I tried calling you back.”

“And I didn’t answer,” Jim shot. “God knows why you took that as an invitation to come anyway.”

Harvey scanned Jim’s body up and down, a quick survey as if checking him for injuries. “I had a feeling something was wrong,” he said. “Doesn’t look like I was too far off the mark.” 

“Maybe you should focus on yourself, Harvey.” 

“Ignore my instincts, you mean?” 

Harvey’s eyes flickered down to a picture Jim had set on the coffee table. Worn and damaged though it was, the glossy image was crystal-clear. It was Jim and Babs' wedding day. Babs wore a stunning gown, and Jim was clad in his Sunday best, a young beat cop with the world ahead of him. The Jim in the picture was smiling down at the bride who’d break him. Jim tended to clutch that picture like a prize.

Harvey looked around at the walls and bookshelves Babs had left empty, and Jim followed the path of his gaze — a mistake. Somehow, even around a man like Harvey, who’d witnessed the worst of the world, Jim was ashamed. He put a hand over his mouth and cast his eyes anywhere else.

“Do you still love her?” Harvey asked.

Jim’s fingers trembled over his mouth, and he searched Harvey’s expression. If he were to offer an explanation, Harvey likely wouldn’t be able to relate. He was younger than Jim, stringently focused and never-married. Whatever he’d had with Rachel, he was seemingly capable of hiding the effect it had on him. The denied proposal had dealt Harvey a painful blow, but Jim had watched from afar as he compartmentalized it and forced it to wither away. 

Jim — Jim could never overcome his grief so easily. Babs haunted him, tormented him. She was a cold he couldn’t shake. 

Harvey’s blue eyes were bereft of the charm they had on-screen — they were cold, hard marble, dark and pensive just for Jim. “After everything she’s done to you, do you still love her?”

“Desperately,” Jim muttered.

“And that’s what all of this is about,” Harvey said, inflected like a question. “Gotham’s cleanest city cop getting close to a DA he can’t even bring himself to trust.”

Jim quelled a sudden, bitter urge to laugh. The vice they shared could hardly be labeled as anything akin to closeness. Needful groping against the wall, sighs and grunts and shedding clothes. It was primal, contemptible, sinful — but never _close_. It wasn’t close when Jim gripped Harvey’s hip, moaned into his mouth, clutched his hair as he fucked him into the sheets. It wasn’t close on the nights that they laid in bed afterward, discussing their jobs as the sweat cooled on their skin. 

Watching the desperate, pained flash in the other man’s eyes, Jim wanted to pity Harvey for ever confusing their predicament for something substantial. Jim didn’t feel pity at all. Instead, he felt the sour regret of a man who’d failed someone. 

“Something stopped you from pulling the trigger,” Harvey said levelly. “I want to know what it was.”

“My son,” Jim murmured. He wrung his hands between his knees, heels bouncing, anxious. “I saw him. Heard him. Realized I wanted to see him again.”

“And what made you pick up the gun?”

“There was a shooting somewhere near the gas sta—”

“What made you put it to your _head?_ ”

Behind Harvey’s shoulder, Jim almost saw Babs there, hands tucked against her body as she judged every rotten piece of him. If he hadn’t been too bone-weary to explain, he might’ve given Harvey an answer. 

“You’ve gotten this much out of me, Jim. If you’re going to use me as a replacement, I’m gonna need some goddamn trust.” 

“I don’t know who the hell you think you are, Harvey, but I’m not enamored with you like the damn press who buy your bullshit idealist act.”

“My _idealism_ kept you from losing your _job_. The one you cherish — the one _she left_ you over,” Harvey retaliated. “If putting Gotham’s every last card on a man who dresses like a _bat_ isn’t idealistic, then I don’t know what is.” 

Harvey rounded the coffee table, stopping close in front of Jim, frustrating lacing the hard lines of his face. “I’ve bought you time. I’ve given you and your unit every out that one can imagine. With all you’ve had me do for you, you know by now that I’m intelligent enough to have put together why this turned out the way it did. _You_ and _I._ ”

“Listen to me, Harvey. There is _no_ emotion between—”

“Bullshit,” Harvey bit. “A drink after hours wouldn’t have ended in your bed if a break was all you really wanted. Telling me where the key is, calling in the middle of the night — it never would’ve gotten this far, Jim, if there wasn’t—” 

“Have you ever considered that all this nonsense is just blowing off steam?”

A tendon jumped in Harvey's jaw. “You wanted this because you knew I was the only man in Gotham you could trust who wasn’t hiding behind a _mask_. You felt _alone_ ,” he scolded. “Between Barbara and I, she gave you an escape from Gotham’s chaos, and _I_ was instrumental in you controlling it. Like it or not, Jim, when Barbara left, you gravitated to the one thing you felt you had left.”

“Keep her name out of your mouth, Harvey.”

“She took your kids,” Harvey’s voice betrayed nothing, flat and simple, like he didn’t have the energy to waste on being smug. Jim wasn’t a violent man, but part of him almost ached to put a bruise on Harvey’s chiseled TV jaw. He didn’t. Jim, ever-passive, ever-weary, did nothing at all.

“I want you to think on this, Jim. What is the biggest difference between her and me? I’ll hint it to you — it’s why you did _this_." Harvey picked up the pistol sideways, setting it back down in one gesture. “No matter how close you played your cards to your chest, I trusted you on every move. I did right by you, Jim. I believed in you—”

Jim heaved a shaky sigh.

“—and Barbara didn’t.”

Jim locked eyes on him. He wanted to feel the emotion he should have felt — some kind of indignation, anger, a heated impulse to defend the woman who’d been his wife. Instead, he felt stunned, maybe. Stunned that he took Harvey’s words and, in them, found meaning. Jim didn’t know whether his hands ached to give the other man a firm right hook or to touch him.

“Fuck off, Harvey,” Jim said, but the words were incongruent with his emotions. He told himself that emotions were unreliable; he’d done enough of following his gut and suffering the consequences. Right now, all he could trust was the script.

In one swift movement, Harvey brought them nearly nose-to-nose. This close, Jim could watch the anger as it swept over his eyes, only flashing for a moment before dimming to a smolder almost uncannily. It was a switch that the man had turned off on a whim. 

“Did I?” The softness of Harvey’s voice, just for an instant, was disarming. “What happens after I leave here, Jim? You crawl into your bed and lie awake? Wallow? Play dead and let the world walk over you?” A bitter laugh. “You don’t want that.”

“You’ve got no idea what I want,” Jim said through his teeth. It sounded more or less like a murmur. He put his hands on his hips, averted his eyes, and took a deep breath.

“I know you don’t want to be alone,” said Harvey. “What Barbara did to you—”

“ _I said keep her name out of your mouth, Dent!_ ” Jim took his hand to Harvey’s collar and wadded the fabric hard in his palm. 

“—wasn’t _fair_. She left you and took everyone else that you had. She showed you no mercy,” Harvey breathed. “ _I_ am fair. You know that.”

“Where do you get off telling someone else what’s good for them?” 

“If you think that’s what I’m doing, you’re wrong,” Harvey said immediately. “I’m telling you what you already know. All I want is a little goddamned trust.”

“Why does it matter whether I trust you?”

“Because if you don’t, everything we’ve done will have been a waste.” 

Soaking in the words, Jim nearly slackened his grip on Harvey’s collar. “A _waste?_ Is that what really matters to you, Dent? Your time?” Jim balked. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You don’t care about this, you want something from me.”

“I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t care,” Harvey bit. “If we lived in a world that made any sense at all, Jim, I would have turned my back on you a long time ago.” 

Jim stopped an involuntary flinch — might have failed, actually, because Harvey saw something in him, sensed something in him, and pushed Jim even further. 

"Tell me why, Jim,” Harvey said through grit teeth. “Tell me why I choose to care about a man who’s been nothing more than a brick wall for no other reason than habitual distrust.”

Jim’s temper flared, overwhelming him as he truly began to consider it. Of the cops at his disposal, most were crooked and disloyal when it came down to the line. There was an empty spot where Babs once slept; an empty hook where she hung her purse. 

Babs’ curtains were still there, a miracle in their own right since she doted over them so much. Small, snarky remarks about her love for them had eventually turned to actual biting insults that dwindled into fights when their marriage had begun to crumble. In her possession, the curtains would be dusted and shaken out. The couch cushions would be cluttered with their little girl’s yarn, and Jim would walk through the front door late every night, heavy with something deeper than the pressures of Gotham’s crime. 

It wasn’t difficult to imagine that Harvey grieved over the things that Rachel used to do; the things she must have left behind.

“Because otherwise, you’d be completely alone,” Jim muttered; couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his tone. “You know what, Dent? You’ve got a real silver tongue.”

“You know the thing about making an argument, Jim? It's infinitely easier to convince someone if they already subconsciously believe it,” Harvey flicked his gaze down to Jim's mouth for exactly an instant, quick enough that Jim could have blinked and missed it entirely. He didn’t. It lit an unwelcome flame in his stomach. Quite immediately, even the man’s softest breaths became an earthquake-tremble against Jim’s fist.

Short of kicking the majority of his unit onto the streets, there weren’t any feasible options to handle the dozen crooked cops that laid in bed with him. He’d been in denial of all of it — turned a blind eye to the unnerving files Harvey dug up and put on his desk — until the evening he’d decided he didn’t want to spend his Friday night wallowing in his own misery. It was over cheap drinks and a shared cigar that Harvey had convinced him to look at the files again. Evidently, by the end of the night, Harvey had convinced him of a whole lot more.

“Besides a handful of people, the whole city is fucked everywhere you look,” Jim muttered.

“Then you see why it bothers me that I'm kept at arm's length. Gotham needs more than an officer and a vigilante to fix it. I want you to let me help you with this, Jim. All of it.”  
  
Harvey's eyes flashed at Jim, colorless blue in the shadow. "I try not to make a habit of it."

"It isn't easy. Takes a lot of willpower not to look at the things she left behind and ... relive it." Jim swept his eyes over the room again: Babs' curtains, her old slippers, a stray true crime novel. He didn't notice Harvey's fingers on his chin until he was turned back entirely, looking right into the other man’s eyes. The warm touch left as quickly as it came.

"I don't do it alone," Harvey said. _Harvey Dent,_ Gotham’s white knight, insinuating that someone as broken and washed-out as Jim served any purpose beyond rescuing Gotham from itself. 

"Do I help you?" Jim asked.

Harvey spent a long time observing Jim as if he were a case file on his desk, puzzling and intriguing and rife with leads that all conflicted with one-another. Then he glanced at his mouth again, stoking the unwelcome fire Jim thought he’d managed to extinguish. He didn’t answer — didn’t acknowledge Jim’s question at all. Just looked from his eyes to his lips and back again, his expression easy and soft. 

“What are you thinking, Jim?”

“Do you want me to tell you or do you want me to show you?” Jim asked, all lieutenant, all impersonal, because sounding anything reminiscent of the tender voice he’d used with Babs felt like blasphemy. 

Jim heard it before he saw it — the crystal-clear ‘ping’ of a coin being flipped, immediately followed by the glittery blur of Harvey’s spinning silver dollar. Harvey caught it, flipped it onto his hand, and studied its answer. Then he stepped so close, his breaths were a hot puff of air across Jim’s mouth, sweet with some flavor of drink.

“Show me,” he whispered.

It occurred to Jim that he couldn’t remember when he got into the practice of handling live grenades. It was a bottomless pit of all manner of consequences, allying with Batman and sleeping with Harvey Dent. He had a habit of clutching that particular grenade far too tightly. Knotting his fingers in the golden hair at the back of Harvey’s neck, too gentle because Jim was too gentle a man, he saw himself tugging at the pin.

Then Jim kissed him slow, shallow, like he was hiding secrets behind his teeth. It was like all of his bones had turned to ash, having quietly burned the entire time. Harvey pulled him atom-close, molten-hot, lava-slow, running burning fingertips beneath Jim’s jacket as if deliberately coaxing him. Heat coursing down his spine, Jim gripped him tighter, not on principle, but to keep himself from disintegrating entirely.

Jim intended for it to end right there, but Harvey tilted his head left, turned the kiss deeper, and Jim gave in to his desperate, sloppy tongue like a teenager. It wasn’t the first time he was halfway stunned by just how hot and gentle Harvey’s mouth could be. For as composed as Harvey was — static, unshakable gold — he matched Jim’s languid rhythm and challenged him deeper.

Jim pulled away, panting, breathless. He scrambled his own jacket off his shoulders, unsteady on his feet with Harvey’s cologne still inches away.

The room quickly filled with the sounds of clicking belts and whispering fabric. What guilted Jim most wasn’t the act of undressing for Harvey. It was the here-and-there glances he couldn't help but cast at him. Despite himself, he found his gaze drawn to the muscles in Harvey’s back, the bend of his flat stomach, the golden hair peeking from his boxers. The other man was different from Babs in every way — Babs, with her supple skin and curved thighs. Babs, with that c-section scar that Jim would kiss on his way down to the heat between her legs.

Jim made the mistake he always did — the mistake of losing his focus, of catching Harvey's blown blue gaze — and somewhat smiled at him. As if Jim’s recognition was stimulation enough, Harvey’s cock twitched on its own. It sent a hot rush of shivers spilling down Jim’s spine with all the heat and suddenness of liquid fire. Jim needed that like he needed a hole in the head; needed that like he needed the air in his lungs. Harvey gave it to him either way, dragging them together and smothering Jim in hot, naked skin.

Jim tasted the desperation on Harvey’s tongue, hot and smooth and hard and _deep._ He pushed Harvey backward into the master bedroom, motivated by the sticky-slick heat of the other man’s cock pinned hard against his. With a light grip on his elbow, Harvey turned Jim and pushed him down onto the edge of the bed. Running a smooth palm up his thigh, Harvey slid towards the very core of him, canting Jim’s head back with the pressure of his searing lips against his ear. He spoke muffled words, filthy sentiments, and they had Jim groaning, gasping, tightening his hold on Harvey’s hips. 

“Oh god,” Jim breathed. He heard Harvey murmur something about the _sound_ of him, but his voice was vague, faint, overpowered by the sensation of his hands smoothing up Jim’s thighs as he sank to his knees. 

Somewhere between the lips on his navel and the nails on his skin, Jim realized, horror-sudden, that this man was _Harvey Dent_. It was too late already. Harvey’s gaze was lost in him, deep and blue and dark with lust, and Jim wove a hand in his soft gold hair like it’d make his mind up for him.

There was a breathless, glorious moment of white-hot lips sucking down Jim’s swollen cock. Jim canted his hips, forcing his last few inches into that perfect, greedy heat. Jim moaned with every ounce of breath in his lungs, his thighs clenching tight around Harvey’s ribs, shaking with the hot pleasure in his gut.

If he closed his eyes — didn’t think about it, kept them locked tight as a prison — he could imagine Babs' strawberry-brown curls, her scent, her touch, her sweet, keening moan around his length. She’d never quite been like this — never sucked him down hot and whole, straight to the hilt — but Jim could pretend that she had because her tongue was soft, summer-warm. When it stopped, Jim was too overwhelmed to notice.

“Open your eyes,” Harvey said, more breath than speech. His gaze pinned Jim where he sat, burning at his skin with the too-close heat of hands hovering over smoldering coals. Disheveled, sweaty gold hair brushed the bridge of Harvey’s nose, and Jim wondered if he’d look more or less breathtaking if he pushed it back and away from his face. Harvey slid two fingers into his mouth, wet them, and pulled them swiftly out.

“Harvey,” Jim whispered. “Harvey, I’m sorry—” 

Jim's own gasp interrupted him, loud in the cold darkness as Harvey shoved inside of him, twisting and scissoring as he entered him deep with no warning at all. “Oh god, _Harvey_.”

“Say my name again,” Harvey ground out. “Tell me who’s fucking you.”

"You, Harvey.” 

Harvey fucked him deeper; found that spot and hit it relentlessly, teasing Jim’s hipbone with his perfect, hot mouth. “Again.”

“Oh, god. Oh, please. Harvey. _Harvey_.”

Harvey sank his mouth down on Jim’s cock, swallowing around it with infernal slowness, hammering the spot that made Jim moan and shake and nearly sob. Jim’s thighs squeezed hard around Harvey’s shoulders and he fell back onto the bed, balling the sheets in a fist. Jim stopped Harvey with a hand on his jaw just as he was about to come, teetering on the edge of euphoria. 

“God, Jim,” Harvey breathed. The room was lightless, shadowed all but for the opulent blue of his gaze. “Just look at you.”

The breath went out of Jim in a deep sigh and it was as if all of his bones went with it. “God, I want you to put it in me,” he murmured into the dark. “Just do it now. Get the lube—”

Slowly, Harvey slipped his fingers out of Jim, sat up, and grabbed the clear bottle from the nightstand. He spilled the cool oil into the palm of his hand, stroking it over his cock before smoothing it into Jim’s entrance with a focused kind of reverence. With his opposite hand, he traced Jim’s body from shoulder to nipple to sensitive navel torturously slow. Tight hold, careful palm. He stopped at Jim’s hip and his grip tightened, the barest hint of nails digging into Jim’s flesh.

“Yeah,” he breathed, entirely to himself. “Yeah, I’m gonna fuck you.”

Then he kissed Jim wicked and burning, desperate tongue, desperate hands. As Jim was pushed flat onto the mattress, he remembered just exactly who Harvey Dent really was. He remembered it in the fingers at his nape, the thumb against his Adam’s apple pressing as if checking a dying pulse. Harvey’s sharp hips ground hard between Jim’s legs, killing him, breaking him, but never entering. Every groan Harvey stole from Jim’s lungs was a harsh reminder that he could never fully convince himself that this _wasn’t_ Harvey Dent — not even if he truly wanted to. 

Harvey thrust straight into him, slow and long and hot, pushing pushing pushing until there was nothing more for Jim to take. Jim’s hands gravitated to Harvey’s solid back and he breathed a shaky groan, head knocking back into the covers. He drew his legs tighter around Harvey’s waist, sore and sweaty muscles gripping him involuntarily as he moaned, helpless to regain control.

Every goddamn time they did this, Jim invariably became a crumbling mess — and every time, it got harder to resist; got easier to pick up the pieces.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Harvey breathed against Jim’s mouth. 

The world was pleasure, decadence, white-hot magic, and Harvey Dent was hitting the deepest parts of him over and over. Jim traced the goosebumps on Harvey’s reddened flesh and decided that the man was comparable to nothing. A kind of beauty Jim could touch. The type of gorgeous, earthly angel that Babs hadn’t been for a long, long time.

Harvey flicked his eyes up to Jim’s, cool ice on soft brown, and slid his palm down Jim’s tight stomach. Jim couldn’t manage a word before Harvey slid his palm up and down his swollen cock, his touch like slippery-wet silk.

Jim thought he might die, so he gasped Harvey's name and for the love of god, those blue eyes nearly killed him anyway.

The pressure built rapidly: pressure in his stomach, pleasure in his cock, The blinding white euphoria of each thrust rattled Jim to his core until, gradually, Harvey slowed as their breaths became erratic. The hand on Jim's cock was torturous, perfect as the life was fucked from him. Jim felt each shudder of Harvey’s body, every quivering muscle as he pulled out, drove in, fucked him impossibly deep until Jim saw little more than stars. 

“Fuck,” Jim breathed, and his back arched of its own accord, pinning him against hot, slick flesh. “Just like that.”

Harvey tucked his mouth against Jim’s ear; murmured things like _‘god, Jim — god,’_ and _‘please, please, please'_ into his flesh like he was begging him. They were sobs, almost — whimpers. Jim felt Harvey clutch his hand the moment he began to tremble, his voice broken, moaning unabashed.

Jim tumbled over the edge immediately at the sound of it, clutching him close as he spilled white-hot between their stomachs. Harvey fucked him hard through the orgasm, slumping, sobbing, trusting again and again until he dropped his mouth to the curve of Jim’s neck and drove into him hard and firm. Jim savored the deep, baritone melody of Harvey’s release — the hitch of breath, keening groan, the way he breathed his name again and again and again.

The descent from the high was slow, a symphony of panting breaths, limbs tangled and tired and heavy. In the soothing quiet, opened his eyes to the sight of their hands intertwined on the mattress — strange, utterly natural-looking on the warm linen. Harvey gently pulled his hand back from Jim's tight grasp, and their palms were clammy and hot where they'd been woven.

It wasn’t until they separated that Jim reflected on what they’d just done. Laying bare naked under the breeze of the whirring fan, Jim found he didn't mind Harvey's presence at all. Babs had once laid with him every night, pushing herself as far to the other side as she could get. Jim lived for the moments she'd turn onto her back, her peaceful face haloed by glossy auburn hair. He missed the time he'd stolen. Missed the things that reminded him of when they'd been happy together.

She was gone. She was gone, and Harvey occupied the space she'd left behind. He didn't push Jim away or devalue the purpose they both found in fixing Gotham. He lay on his back beside him, open and vulnerable with all the comfort of a cat bathing in moonlight. The world was shadow, velvet, midnight blue, and what light crept through the blinds painted Harvey's skin opalescent.

The image stunned Jim into silence. It bought Harvey the time to smile at him — patient, sweet, almost tender. One of the smiles Jim had seen him give Rachel in court. Only then did it occur to Jim that Harvey had long-stopped thinking about Rachel at all. 

Jim looked Harvey in the eyes. "I love her," he said quietly. "But I should know if I need to start loving you too."

Harvey reached his fingers down the sheets and materialized his coin from beneath Babs’ old pillow. Holding the coin, pointer finger and thumb, he showed Jim its face. Silver dollar. Lady Liberty. By some trick of the night, the moon flashed on her melancholic expression as if purposeful. “Heads, we go through with it.” 

Swallowing, Jim forced his voice to remain even. “Serious? You can’t leave this decision up to the flip of a —”

Harvey tossed it, moonlight vacillating on the silver as it spun above their heads. Jim traced its descent, too-slow as he observed it, and the weight of the gamble bore heavy on him. Somewhere between the fourth and fifth rotations, it occurred to Jim which side he wanted the coin to land on.


End file.
